Togetherness in Israel

15

b1976. It takes many forms—words, attitudes, violence. All form ba picture of a large and growing minority that poses a threat to bthe very existence of the Jewish state—a time bomb ticking baway. Consider:

b•The majority of the chairmen of Arab local councils in bIsrael—the recognized spokesmen of Israel’s Arabs and the btouted “moderate” body—on January 20, 1979, approved a res- bolution “welcoming the struggle of their brethren in the West bBank and Gaza Strip against the occupation, annexation, and bcolonialist settlements and expressed their solidarity with the bstruggle of the Palestinian people under the leadership of the bPLO to establish its independent state.”

b•In the Jerusalem neighborhood of East Talpiot on Novem- bber 26, 1979, kindergarten teacher Yael Aviv was playing in a bsmall park with the children in her care. Suddenly six Arabs bappeared, who began throwing stones at the terrified children band shouting: “Jews, go home!” A group of young girls across bthe street burst into hysterics and it took an hour to calm them. bSaid the teacher: “I will not take the children there anymore. bThat is enough for me.” Said Sara Graetz, a resident and a sur- bvivor of the Holocaust: “I would have never believed that this bcould occur in an independent Jewish state.” As this was hap- bpening, the family of Binyamin Sachar was recovering from an battack on their automobile as they drove through the Arab vil- blage of Bet Tzafafa, at Jerusalem’s southern edge. Stones bsmashed the windows of the car and a shaken Sachar said: “I bnever thought that here in Jerusalem I would have to worry babout attacks.”

b•The head of Israel’s northern command, General Avigdor bBen-Gal, told an interviewer in the army magazine Bamachane b(September 1979) that numerous Jewish settlements in the bGalilee had turned to him with requests for protection from local bArabs. The Jews claimed that “they feel themselves isolated and basked for Israeli forces to protect them.” Numerous incidents of bArab attacks on persons and property were listed. Ben-Gal ap- bproved the paving of parallel roads to Jewish settlements so that the Jewish bsettlers would not have to pass through Arab villages at night.

b•“Lately I hear, even from the most moderate of Arabs, bopen statements such as: ‘Get ready. Soon you will have to move bout of your house. We will get your house and the houses of all b